Data is the currency of success—but the journey from recognizing data analysis's importance to harnessing its power is a path that many small business owners have less travelled.
Research conducted by the Georgia Small Business Development Center (SBDC) uncovered an interesting fact: On average, businesses that embrace data analytics experience a 15% increase in sales compared to counterparts who don't analyze their data. This statistic alone should serve as a compelling motivation for small business owners to delve into the world of data analytics and use the technology available to them.
What is data analytics and how does it help small businesses?
Data analytics is gathering data from multiple sources, visually analyzing it, and extracting valuable insights from it.
The key pain points of small businesses that data analytics solves are:
1) Scattered data sources
Small businesses often use various applications to manage their operations, marketing, finance, sales, and more.
Analytics Solution: Data management
Collecting data from these diverse sources and consolidating it into a single data warehouse provides a comprehensive view of the business. (Read more about data management).
2) Poor quality of data
Poor data quality leads to bad decisions and revenue loss. Small businesses barely have sufficient resources to run their operations—and manual data preparation is so tedious that even an enterprise can't do it without the help of an analytics platform.
Analytics Solution: Data Preparation
Data needs to be cleaned and prepared for analysis to ensure accurate results—and high-quality data leads to better decision-making.
3) Hard-to-understand numbers
Having fewer resources, small businesses need to put huge effort into running their operations seamlessly. Crunching data as numbers is often functionally impossible for them.
Analytics Solution: Visual Analytics
Visualizing data through charts and KPI widgets makes it easily understandable for even users without a deep background in analytics.
How analytics helps small business owners increase their operational efficiency:
Focus on your core business
Analytics saves time and allows business owners to focus on core business growth rather than spending time on manual number crunching.
Optimize marketing spend
Analytics helps identify unnecessary marketing expenses, underperforming campaigns, and areas where marketing spend can yield better conversion rates.
Increase customer retention
Businesses can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by analyzing customer pain points and updating products or services to meet their needs.
Venture into new potential markets
Analytics helps small businesses identify potential revenue streams and untapped markets for expansion.
How Zoho Analytics helps small businesses
Start your analysis right away: Get started quickly with a wide range of prebuilt reports and automatically generated dashboards for popular business apps and social media apps.
Ask questions and generate reports: Use Ask Zia, our smart AI assistant, to make conversations to generate reports in seconds, eliminating the need for technical assistance.
Unearth underlying information: Uncover hidden insights from your data with a single click.
Get alerts when you reach milestones—or when things go wrong: Stay informed about milestones and downturns by setting up alerts.
Harness an AI-powered intelligent assistant: Zia, powered by ChatGPT, simplifies the creation of formulas and queries and helps you discover public datasets without leaving the application.
Small business analytics is not just a buzzword; it's a game-changer. Embracing analytics can provide small business owners with the tools they need to uncover hidden opportunities for growth, optimize operations, and drive revenue. With powerful data analytics software tools like Zoho Analytics, even businesses with limited resources can harness the power of data to make informed decisions and thrive in a competitive marketplace. Don't miss out on the potential of your data—take the leap into small business analytics today!
Comments